MD Anderson doctors discuss new treatments at Colony in Palm Beach

John Nelander

Friday

Jan 26, 2018 at 12:01 AMJan 26, 2018 at 7:19 PM

Immunotherapy — marshaling the body’s own defenses to fight cancer — is a game-changing approach to treatment, and its full potential has yet to be realized, leaders of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston told a packed conference room at The Colony on Monday.

It is already being successfully used to battle bladder, lung and kidney cancers and melanoma, among other forms of the disease. And the treatments can be long-lasting, zapping cancer cells that try to make a comeback later.

"I’d describe it as a paradigm shift," Dr. Peter Pisters, president of MD Anderson, said in an interview after a seminar. "Historically, we’ve anchored ourselves in the three forms of treatment — surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Those were mainstays for decades.

"There were many attempts to try to understand the immune system, but we never could figure out how to harness it."

For decades, researchers focused on plant-based treatment sources and extracting compounds to test whether they were effective against cancer. They would find one with some promise and run it through clinical trials.

But new approaches are being pursued, Pisters said. Researchers are looking at the biology of the disease and asking how the body’s own natural defense system can be used to deal tumors a knockout blow.

"It’s a movement to a science-driven approach that has accelerated over the last decade."

Not all cancers respond to immunotherapy. Brain cancers such as glioblastoma are among the most difficult to treat because there are surgical limitations to removing the cancer. But it’s also hard to get drugs into the brain, doctors say, because of a "blood-brain barrier."

"Most of the drugs we have are proteins, and they don’t cross this blood-brain barrier," Pisters said. "That creates the problem of getting effective drugs to the area."

Other approaches have proven successful, though. Susan Tancer, of Palm Beach Gardens, had a type of brain cancer called oligodendroglioma that responded to surgery and chemotherapy at Anderson, and she has been cancer-free since 2006.

"I still go back for checkups because you never know," she said, "and also it’s great peace of mind."

Researchers are hopeful, though, of finding a way to use immunotherapy to treat brain cancers.

"We still have a long way to go, but there’s evidence that one day all cancers will be treatable with immune therapy," said Dr. Patrick Hwu, co-director of Anderson’s Center for Cancer Immunology Research.

Another type of cancer that has been difficult to treat with immunotherapy is pancreatic because it involves so many different mutations of the cells. When one mutation is attacked, others occur, "and it accelerates," Pisters said.

Progress is being made, he added, "but it’s always hard to predict how long it will take to do anything in science."

Margaret Cooper, a West Palm Beach attorney who has been battling pancreatic cancer, is participating in clinical trials at Anderson and told the audience: "Knock on wood, so far, so good for me."

She still works and plays tennis four to five times a week.

"My advice to anyone with cancer is to ignore it" when it comes to everyday living, she said. "Just go on like you always do unless your doctor tells you to do something else.

"The statistics are bad, but I don’t look at them. Whatever small percentage there is of people who will make it, that’ll be me."

Cancer prevention is another line of attack for doctors and researchers — not just living a healthy lifestyle but encouraging children, teenagers and young adults to access the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. HPV can cause genital, anal and throat cancer. And by the time the typical middle-aged person shows up with symptoms, according to Anderson doctors, 80 percent of them are at Stage 4, meaning it has spread to a lymph node.

Vaccination is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for boys and girls age 11-12. But the vaccine is potentially beneficial up to age 26.

Dr. Erich Sturgis is a professor of head and neck surgery at MD Anderson.

Tongue cancer and some throat cancers have "dramatically increased" since the 1990s, said Dr. Erich Sturgis, Anderson professor of head and neck surgery. There are more than 30,000 new cancers linked to HPV in the U.S. every year, according to the CDC.

Still, the vaccination rate among girls is at just 49.5 percent; 37.5 percent among boys.

"Getting vaccinated is imperative," Sturgis said. "If you have kids or grandkids who are in this age group, please get them vaccinated. Don’t miss the opportunity to prevent a cancer."